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Keep Germ Lab Quarantined

by

Stan Cox

Scientists, farmers and government officials for 80 years
have kept the U.S.
mainland free of the virus that causes foot-and-mouth disease -- a
horrific, highly contagious killer of cloven-footed livestock such as cattle.
But our government may soon bring the virus onto the mainland on purpose.

The Department of Homeland Security is seeking a home for a
National Bio and Agro-Defense Facility that would, among other things, take
over the work of Plum Island Animal Disease Center, a former Department of
Agriculture complex lying off the east end of New York's Long Island. But
Homeland Security proposes to do this on one of five inland sites, all in
agricultural regions.

Foot-and-mouth doesn't mortally infect people.
However, other pathogens that DHS plans to work with, including Nipah and
Hendra viruses and those that cause African swine fever, Rift Valley fever and
Japanese encephalitis, can kill humans as well as livestock.

The waters surrounding Plum Island
provide a relatively secure barrier against spread of pathogens. DHS has the
option of building the new lab there, and that would be the sensible thing to
do.

But government and university officials in five states with
big, vulnerable agricultural economies have bought their tickets in the terror lab
sweepstakes, vying for a chance to play host to the deadly microbes. The
prospect of federal grants and jobs is leading them to put their states'
farms and ranches, and possibly their residents, at risk.

DHS brushes aside charges of recklessness. Its own
environmental impact study concluded that the likelihood of escape --
which it estimated would cause $2.8 to $4.2 billion in economic damage
nationally -- is "extremely low," given appropriate attention
to design, construction and operation.

The DHS analysis, released in June, manifests the deep,
abiding faith in technology that is woven through American society. But the
department was beaten to the punch by an independent government study that
relied not on faith but on evidence. In May the U.S. Government Accountability
Office told Congress that DHS has not shown foot-and-mouth can be studied
safely on the mainland. It noted that a 1978 escape from containment on Plum Island
was kept in check only by the surrounding waters.

Citing many past releases worldwide, it argued that
technology and procedures alone don't fully protect against escape,
because human error can never be eliminated. The subsequent DHS report made no
claim that the problem of human error could be solved.

In those heartland communities being examined as possible
homes for the viral zoo, residents' concern goes far beyond "not in
my back yard." They stress that a gamble with such virulent pathogens
imperils the whole nation.

Over
the past 30 years, I have lived in three of the five candidate
communities, but I would no more prefer to see the germ lab plopped
down near Flora, Miss., or San Antonio than to have it sited close to
friends or
family in Manhattan, Kan.,
Athens, Ga., or
Raleigh, N.C.

Last month, Rep. John D. Dingell of Michigan, chairman of the Committee on
Energy and Commerce, wrote to the White House urging a halt to what he called a
"massive" post-2001 boom in construction of bioterror-oriented
labs. The committee found that bungling in labs across the country has already led
to releases of dangerous pathogens. Its harshest criticism was aimed at DHS.
Wrote Dingell: "What we have learned so far has been frightening."

But instead of stopping the proliferation of germ labs, the
government is willing to let its most controversial department keep herds of
infected livestock in big buildings surrounded by people and other animals,
with no geographical barriers.

DHS officials say they will decide on a site for the big new
lab late this fall or in early 2009. There's still a chance that
foot-and-mouth and the other pathogens will be kept secure in a new facility on
Plum Island.

But that will happen only if citizens raise a ruckus. Those
who keep the quietest may just find themselves winning the germ jackpot.

That will be the time to start wishing them -- and all
of us -- good luck.

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Stan Cox, a Department of Agriculture research geneticist for 13 years, is now lead scientist for the Land Institute in Salina, Kan. Author of "Sick Planet: Corporate Food and Medicine," he wrote this comment for the institute's Prairie Writers Circle.

Further

Last week, the "world's most moral army" bombed and leveled Gaza's much-loved al-Meshal Theater and Cultural Center, rare home to hundreds of artists, dancers and writers and vital symbol of Palestinian identity, to "make residents feel the price of escalation." The next day, the Palestinian band al-Anqaa (or Phoenix) returned in defiance to play for their beleaguered neighbors, because "art is, too, a form of resistance."

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